iPhone Apps With iAd Integration Appear In The App Store

We’ve noticed that at least two popular iPhone apps – Showtimes and Yellow Pages (but not related to yellowpages.com)- have updated their apps over the last couple of days to support Apple’s iAd advertising platform.

Both of these apps are built by Avantar, LLC and rely heavily on advertising, and especially for Showtimes, iAd’s emphasis on video ad content should fit right in with Showtimes’ movie content.

While a number of apps have started to roll out iOS4 updates, iAd integration seems to be slower to this point. Though iAds doesn’t officially launch until July 1, the fact that we’re just seeing these integrations now could mean a couple of things. First of all, it could just be that developers have been focusing on iOS4 updates, putting iAds on the back-burner, especially as they still have a dozen days before the platform launches.

Another possibility, is that a number of developers plan to stick with AdMob (if they can) and aren’t interesting in iAds. A third possibility is that developers are in a wait-and-see mode right now with iAds, and aren’t interested in being involved until the platform/ad network matures a bit.

Of course, with both of these apps, we can’t see how the iAd integration works yet as the platform isn’t live, but we’ll make sure to check back on July 1 to see how slick the integrations are.